Was Persona 5 Strikers Worth It?

Spinoff games can be risky. For every gem like Mario Kart, there’s a stinker like Metal Gear Survive. Was Persona 5 Strikers worth it? Let’s infiltrate this game and find out!

What is Persona 5 Strikers?

If you’ve played any of the Megaten games, you know that most of them are turn-based RPGs. Some of the games will have visual novel or dating elements, and some of them are strategy titles or dungeon crawlers.

This title, which was previously released as Persona 5 Scramble in Japan, is an action hack-and-slash from Koei Tecmo, who make games like Dynasty Warriors as well as the licensed spinoffs. Here are a few tips I picked up during my sentence in Persona 5 Striker’s jails. There are no social links in this game.

Pick your battles

This title might have been made by the folks behind the Dynasty Warriors series, but Joker and his buddies aren’t nearly as durable as Zhao Yun or Yukimura. Running up to enemies or even worse, getting caught, is not going to go well for the Phantom Thieves. Take advantage of cover spots, and be aware of map geometry. If there isn’t a way to get the jump on an enemy by approaching it directly, then look up and around, as there is probably a vantage point or a way to attack from another angle.

The game will telegraph when it’s about to be an all-out brawl, such as the hacking missions or minibosses. You unfortunately won’t be able to ambush these enemies! For all other encounters, use your Third Eye to look for cover spots and vantage points.

Recovering Health and SP

The battles in Persona 5 Strikers can get downright chaotic. Inevitably, you’re going to take some damage, and it’ll most likely be from an enemy that was prepping a spell off to the side that you weren’t able to see. Here’s how to stay topped up on health and SP.

You can leave the dungeon without any consequences, so if you’re getting low, feel free to pop on out. This will also make the mobs respawn, so keep that in mind. Unlike the main game, this will not make time go by.

Pick up the Ambusher perk for free reliable healing. You’re going to want to ambush almost every mob anyway, so this is a no-brainer.

Metaverse Medic is another useful perk that makes all those small healing items (sodas and the like) that much more efficient. Notably, it also increases the efficacy of SP healing items.

Oracle Healing isn’t as useful as you would think, since you can just exit the jail to heal up. I’ll admit that it can be useful in those back-to-back battles. However, if you save up your early points to buy it, you’re going to be underwhelmed, and it costs a lot, comparatively.

Every day, check all the shops and vending machines and stock up. Those small healing items pull their weight, and money is easy to come by in this game, especially when you start farming treasure demons.

Best Bond Skills

I’ve already covered this in The Best Bond Skills in Persona 5 Strikers, so check that out.

Best Personas

You can check my list of The Best Personas in Persona 5 Strikers to plan out your endgame demons.

What does it do well?

I’ll admit, I was a little worried about how the two concepts would mesh, but the gameplay and jail traversal feels very on-brand for Persona. This title is probably one of Koei’s best releases to date, if not the best. If they just need to break away from their mainline games to get some inspiration then I’m all for it.

I like that the spoiler character is unlocked from the start in subsequent playthroughs, and merciless difficulty really ups the ante.

The soundtrack is, as always, excellent. As someone who spent a lot of time around Persona 5 between vanilla, royal, and PQ2, hearing certain tracks just hits me just right. There’s a particularly tranquil scene in the game where “Beneath the Mask” plays and it’s incredibly comfy.

What could it do better?

The Phantom Thieves have apparently been doing cardio since P5 ended, because they’re able to knock out a full dungeon in just a day or so. Initially I didn’t want to leave the jail in case it advanced the clock.

However, eventually I was totally tapped out and had to heal and restock, so I left. There were no consequences, and the only thing that happened was the mobs respawning in the jail. Why not allow us to heal at checkpoints, then? For that matter, why not allow us to shop at checkpoints?

Another gripe I had was with Merciless mode, in which retrying battles was prohibited. Trash mobs and minibosses are on totally different levels, and I got my ass handed to me several times by the Bicorn in the sewer…and had to rerun the sewer each time I died. Yeah, it got old, and it didn’t feel like difficulty, it felt like they’d stripped a QoL feature from the game.

Each Persona also has certain spells that it casts for free at the end of a combo string. This is incredibly useful, but there’s no way in game to check the combo skills! The only way to “justify” this decision is by saying that you need to build familiarity with your personas to know their skills, but honestly, screw that, I want to know which combo string to spam to rack up super effective hits.

Is it fun?

I love it, but here’s the part where I add a qualifier into my review. This isn’t like the mainline persona games, there are no social links, it is strictly an action game. Do you like Dynasty/Samurai/Hyrule/Fire Emblem Warriors? Are you only into Persona because of the social links?

I’ve seen a lot of bad faith tantrums from people who bought the game not knowing what it was.

Value?

I definitely got my money’s worth out of it. My save file says it took a hundred hours to “master” the game on my first playthrough (this involves completing all quests, etc.), but there was quite a lot of idle time counted there since I tend to multitask. I spent a lot of time getting my personas maxed and built for merciless, because it’ll filter you if you aren’t prepared.

Was Persona 5 Strikers Worth It?

If you want a fun action game with a Persona skin, then pick this title up. If you’re hungering for more of the vanilla Persona experience, then you aren’t going to find it here. I think Persona 5 Strikers was worth it. It’s a slick, stylish game that will give you more of the Phantom Thieves.

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